New Harcourt President
Harcourt Education has named Lloyd "Buzz" Waterhouse to the newly created position of president and COO. Waterhouse, whose background is in technology, will have direct responsibility for most U.S. divisions, including Harcourt School Publishers; Holt, Rinehart and Winston; Harcourt Achieve; Harcourt Trade Publishers; and Greenwood-Heinemann. Julie McGee, who had overseen Achieve, Trade and G-H, will be heading a new business unit. Waterhouse will report to Harcourt Education Global CEO Pat Tierney.
July Store Sales Tumble
Unable to match the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince bonanza stores enjoyed last summer, bookstore sales plunged 9.3% in July, to $1.08 billion, according to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The decline in July moved bookstore sales back to a decline for 2006, with sales in the first seven months of the year off 0.6% at $8.55 billion. Sales for all of retail were slow in July, up only 3.9%, though year-to-date sales were still ahead 7%.
Solid Quarter For Wiley
Total revenue for the first quarter ended July 31 rose 11%, to $263.4 million, at John Wiley & Sons, while net income increased 8%, to $21.9 million. Sales in the professional/trade segment rose 9%, to $85.6 million, led by strong gains in the cooking segment, good increases in the professional education unit and higher online advertising sales and rights sales. Revenue in the STM segment increased 10%, to $53.6 million, and sales in the higher education group rose almost 5%, to $47.7 million.
Internationally, sales in Wiley's European group increased 14%, led by journal sales and sales of professional/ trade books. Sales in Asia/Australia/Canada rose 16%.
Spier New York Bought
Spier New York, one of the few advertising agencies specializing in the publishing field, has been acquired by Warren Kremer Paino Advertising. The Spier purchase adds a new field for WKP, which will retain the Spier name as a division and has kept a large number of Spier employees. Among Spier's publishing clients are Random House, Rodale and Penguin.
Balliett, Turner Up at Avalon
Will Balliett, v-p of the Avalon Publishing Group and publisher and editorial director of Carroll & Graf, has been named to the same posts at Avalon's Thunder's Mouth Press imprint, replacing John Oakes, who left in July. Philip Turner, currently editor-in-chief of C&G, will add editor-in-chief of Thunder's Mouth Press to his duties and also launch a nonfiction line at C&G to be called Philip Turner Books.
LBF Forms Advisory Board
The London Book Fair has named Simon Master as the head of its newly formed advisory board. The board, which includes a range of industry executives from both sides of the Atlantic, will provide the LBF with advice on new developments in the international publishing market as well as guidance on drawing up its conference program. Its first meeting will be at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Light Novels From Seven Seas
American indie manga publisher Seven Seas Entertainment will launch a line of licensed, illustrated "light" prose novels from Japan beginning in April 2007. Light novels are aimed at young adult to older readers and are a popular format in Japan. The books are small (4"x6"), 200 to 300 pages, and feature manga-like covers, color pages and illustrations throughout. Seven Seas plans to translate six titles to start.
BISG Co-Chairs Elected
Andrew Weber, senior v-p of operations at Random House, and Sourcebooks president and publisher Dominique Raccah have been elected co-chairs of the Book Industry Study Group. Weber and Raccah succeed Barnes & Noble's Joe Gonnella, who completed his two-year term.
Corrections
In our feature "On Sale in October" (Sept. 11), the first printing of John Grisham's An Innocent Man and the jacket art were incorrect. Doubleday has announced a printing of 2.8 million copies. For the correct jacket, see www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6370004.html?text=on+sale+in+october.
Corrections to and omissions in our Fall Announcements (Aug. 14)—affecting publishers Bunim & Bannigan, NBM, Paragon House, Rodmell and Theatre Communications Group—can be found at www.publishersweekly.com/fallcorrections.
